Awesome project alert! One of my clients invited me into something special this fall. They wanted help producing the visual side of their annual project that honors the veterans on their team. Leidos has been doing this Heroes of Leidos project for a number of years but this is the first time they hired a professional photographer to tell this story. In the past, they relied on photos supplied by the veterans they profiled. You’ll see some of those pictures in the profile stories below. Those photos give great context to their military service but they are missing aspects of their lives now which helps make the connection from serving in the military to joining the Leidos team. Our goal was to highlight each veterans honorable choices and I think we nailed it! I created some visual themes that unified our series and I provided location options for each portrait. With DC in our backyard, the options that aligned with our message were plentiful. I couldn’t be happier with the results. We decided to highlight 6 veterans in all and you can see all my portraits in the looping slideshow on the Heroes of Leidos page.

Many thanks to Ed and his team for showing the value of great photography on this project and getting it off the ground. They created a a beautiful and responsive display to highlight our pictures. Nany thanks to Moses (below) for spending a Friday evening with me and Ed and helping us make one of my favorite photos of the series.

We had the opportunity to work with Astrum Solar to tell a story about their company and the impact they are having through a news event. Washington D.C. is offering some aggressive tax incentives to commercial builders to install solar panels and utilize other sources of green energy. Astrum Solar helped consult and retrofit an existing apartment building in Washington, D.C. We learned that the recently appointed United States Department of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro was going to attend the ribbon cutting and make remarks. We knew that using this news event as a integral part of the narrative arc for this video would lend a greater level of trustworthiness to their mission and product. They were a fantastic client with a sharp team. I’m looking forward to collaborating with them on future stories.

Are you looking for something fun to do with your friends, family, or in-laws? Do you want to make your friends from warmer climates pay for their endless stream of photos on social media that depict their warm winter paradise? Are you a human? If you answered yes to any of these questions then you need to visit the National Harbor ICE! 2014 exhibit featuring ‘Frosty the Snowman’ and his buddies. The exhibit is in a giant white dome thingy between The Gaylord and the water at National Harbor.

What you need to know: 1. It is truly 9 degrees Fahrenheit in the air-controlled tent of ice amazingness. Yes, they provide you coats but I would recommend that you wear mittens and a hat. 2. Ice producing companies (these exist?) from around the country have been making the ice for this exhibit for the past year! 3. You can get a little better price via Living Social 4. This exhibit is like a small city inside. It is huge and it will take you around 5-20 minutes to walk through. Longer if you try again and again to breach the sound barrier on the ice slide. 5. While you’re there be sure to check out the awesome Christmas tree on top of the Peeps store along the waterfront (see photo at the end of this post).

What a great project! I really enjoyed capturing 5000 people coming together to be unified and pray for God to use them to live out His love in DC. When I first heard about the upcoming National Prayer gathering, I knew it would be important to tell the story of this big event. McLean Bible Church was one of the 100’s of churches involved but they were also the church that made the biggest push to organize and facilitate the event. I reached out to my contacts there with whom I’ve worked in the past and suggested that they hire me to cover it so they could get the story out to news agencies worldwide and to use the images to get other people and churches involved in future events like this. As a photojournalist I knew I could capture the images that news organizations would publish. I also knew they would trust the authenticity of the images since I hold to the same code of journalism ethics as their organization or agency. I reached out to my contacts at newspapers and wire services and they ran the photos that same day. I’ve really enjoyed working with McLean Bible Church on various projects because they are loving our city in very tangible ways.

This summer, I’ve been working on a series of personal stories for a commercial client. I thought I’d post a behind the scenes photo from one of the recent interviews. The client wanted a higher production value so I have been using Canon’s C300 for this project. I’ll be sure to post the final cuts of this project when it goes live.

Utilizing the Canon C300 and some lighting modifiers for an interview.

Last June I was hired by USA TODAY to shoot an interview and make a portrait of Korean War veteran Congressman Charles Rangel for the 60th Anniversary of the war. Somehow I am just now posting this. Everything about the shoot had to move quickly because we only had about 15 minutes for the video interview and about 90 seconds after that for the portrait. One of my favorite things Rep. Rangel said was that he hasn’t had a bad day since the war. He shares this perspective the war has given him towards the end of the video which was edited by the staff at USA TODAY.

Robert Dallek, a well known Presidential Historian who has written books about the past half-dozen presidencies waxes on the “second-term curse” Obama might be facing IRS scandal and The Justice Department’s subpoena of Associated Press’ records thereby superseding the First Amendment. Interesting times for sure. Check out the full story and video here.

I had the opportunity to produce another 3 camera video shoot for USA TODAY’s weekly Capital Download series and then do a 90-second portrait with the Republican National Chairman Reince Preibus. Here is the link to the video and story.

I’m pretty sure that his parents gave him this name hoping he would have a successful life in politics.

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About Garrett

Garrett Hubbard is a visual storyteller. He utilizes both video & still photography to connect his clients with their audience. He has spent the past four years with USA TODAY—taking him to the White House, the Olympics, The Royal Wedding, and many other places around the world.

Garrett is thankful for the trust he receives from those who invite him to tell their stories and is grateful for mentors and friends who have invested in his life story.